


The Price of Failure

by sakasamasa



Series: Catchfly [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Ending, Emotional Manipulation, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Noctis Lucis Caelum, M/M, Non-Consensual Touching, Poor Noct, Starscourge (Final Fantasy XV), Suicide Attempt, Violence, bad everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakasamasa/pseuds/sakasamasa
Summary: Noctis fails to banish the Scourge and bring back the light. It doesn't end there.[Bad End!AU]





	1. Say 'Ah'

Rough hands grip his jaw, and his mouth is forced open as callous fingers lock tightly over teeth. There is sharp iron and deep bitterness on his tongue, shocking his system back into awareness. On instinct his hands shoot up from where they lay limply at his side, dirtied nails digging uselessly into a grip that wouldn’t budge despite his best efforts. He hears what could be a laugh above and too close, hot breath spilling over his eyes.

“Where are your Gods now, I wonder.”

He looks up at the face of his downfall, his failure, and it looks back with open rapture framed by black Scourge and wild, dirtied burgundy. The words are heavy and dripping with poison, dousing the sorrow and panic that beats against his mind trying to convince him it wasn’t over yet. Blazing gold narrows to slits, Scourge spilling over and cascading down in rivulets of black. Suddenly the sting of something acrid melts together with the blood in his mouth. It’s light as it slides down his throat with ease, turning suffocating when it blocks his airways. He gags and coughs and tries to spit, but it’s all in vain. The hands holding him down are far too strong for his failing body, and soon his raised arms lose their vigour and his legs give out, falling against the other. A warmth wells up in his eyes, but he knows the horror is far too great to cry now. It’s the Scourge, rolling down his cheeks like cold, icy tears. The sole thing he was to banish from the earth was now making him its new host, invading and swallowing up the light within. He’s failed. The realisation hits him like a tidal wave, and he sobs brokenly through the spreading blackness. The burning excitement in Ardyn’s eyes shifts to something rueful for a moment, but he smiles a stained, vicious smile through it all the while.

“You poor thing.”

The words are barely heard over the rush in his ears, over the sickening fullness in his blood and bones. He feels that he’s choking, but with every attempted breath he only swallows more Scourge. He’s losing consciousness fast, but not fast enough to be spared from the shame and the guilt that wracks his being. The guilt overwhelms him much like the ichor in his veins as he thinks of his friends, fighting in earnest for him and for a dawn that would never break. He thinks of Luna and his father, whose sacrifices have all been for naught. He thinks of the Gods themselves, of his ancestors, how they must be watching him break in the very place he would arise as True King. Something snaps, vaguely distant like the rumble of thunder but vividly close like the whipcrack of a lightning strike. The air shifts, and it feels like the ground falls away from beneath, even as the twisted scenery of a ruined throne room remains. Ardyn feels it too, a flicker of surprise in his eyes and a twitch in his grip before he composes himself. Laughter fills the changed air. It sounds like the growling of thousands of daemons, beastly, horrid and loud. All Noctis can feel is a terrible sense of loss, and the Scourge is eager to fill the void that has opened up in him, rushing in like water. The blockage in his throat clears, but he can’t bring his lungs to breathe. He wants to sleep, to die from the shame that brings real, human tears to join the dripping Scourge. Finally, he feels his eyes roll back, and he closes them willingly. Ardyn has won. The Starscourge has won. He has failed, and there is some forgiving finality in accepting it. A darkness kinder than the Scourge takes him.

 

He doesn’t know when he wakes up again. The time before that is spent in a haze, a shroud of blackness in his vision that might be sleep or the Scourge. Sometimes he hears whispers, sometimes he hears screams. When he thinks he hears Prompto, Gladio, Ignis or even Luna, their voices rising and falling, he can do little else but listen. He awaits their approach and mourns their loss, but he’s never strong enough to ask them to stay. Sometimes he feels as though his limbs are being tugged on, held gently or with brutish force. He never whimpers or cries in pain or pleasure, and the touches are gone faster than he can think to react. Soon pain and misery become a distant memory, and through a narcotic darkness he prays he never has to remember.

When he wakes up again he remembers there is no one left to hear his prayers. He rouses slowly, feeling softness under him and a gentle caress against his cheek. His eyelids are stubbornly stuck together, but his dry lips part just enough to take in air. The taste of Scourge is still on his tongue, but the sour vileness is a known one, and it doesn’t startle him as much the second time around. Awareness comes back to him with every lungful, and soon enough he has the strength to pry open his eyes. Once open, the world is nothing but a blur, but there is light. His heart starts beating faster at the notion. The light becomes clearer, less dancing spots in his vision and more of a single, unmoving presence behind a shadow. The colours and shapes become more defined, shifting until he’s sure there’s a person sitting at his side. The thumb that gently rubs slow circles under his eye keeps him grounded as the world around him unfurls. White walls are awash with golden sunlight streaming in from a window he can’t see. He hears a pitched, warbled humming that sounds like birdsong and magic. The person’s features become more prominent as his eyes clear and he hears himself gasp in surprise. It’s Prompto, smiling softly. The amethyst in his eyes shimmer, and Noctis didn’t think he could miss the freckles on the other’s face before now. He calls out to him, but only feels himself mouth the other’s name with a slight wheeze.

“Shh,” Prompto hushes him, and Noctis obeys without protest.

Prompto lets his hand fall away, but this time Noctis doesn’t mourn the loss of touch. This time he knows it’s Prompto after all, not just a nameless, shapeless sensation to come and go. Prompto’s here, meaning he’s alive, and that he’s here to stay. There’s light, meaning the Night isn’t. It doesn’t make sense, and in the back of his mind Noctis feels confusion gnawing, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. A hand comes to rest atop his own lying prone and motionless at his side. He can feel its warmth, its weight, and he doesn’t think there’s anything as comforting as this left in the world. Noctis tries and succeeds in shifting his fingers slightly, giving the other his notice and appreciation of the touch. Prompto chuckles tiredly in response, and it sounds like everything good he’s had to abandon before the Crystal and the prophecy. It sounds like tranquil evenings at havens and long, rainy car rides, like drowsy mornings in his apartment and walking home together after school.

“Prompto,” he manages. It’s rasped and strained, but it’s there. There’s a smile pulling at his cheeks as he says it.

Prompto leans down, mesmerising, loving amethyst slightly hooded. Noctis meets his gaze with affection, chest swelling with relief when he feels the fragile press of lips against his own. His eyes flutter shut as the kiss deepens, and it’s over all too soon. He feels the other pull away, hears the creak of the bed frame and the shifting of fabric. He opens his eyes, more easily this time, and his plummeting heart skips a deafening beat. For a moment he considers closing his eyes and counting to five, ten, twenty, however long it would take for this horrible nightmare to pass. But try as he might, he can’t tear his horrified gaze away from the face that had shifted so suddenly into something just as familiar yet a thousand times more hated. He’s stunned into silence, but words dance on his tongue like bubbling poison. The Scourge in him surfaces like an extension of his rising anger. He can feel it swimming beneath his skin, feels it spilling over his widened eyes and from his parted lips. Prompto was never here. Ardyn’s mocking and human visage twists, laying his true likeness bare. Noctis hisses at him before he can stop himself, ignoring the Scourge underneath his tone as he tries moving his unwilling limbs to lash out. It doesn’t work, and Ardyn revels in his frustration as he grins with malice. The distant ringing of magic dissipates as the mirage of sunlight flickers and dies, and as though a curtain falls to hide the stage, darkness returns to the room. It melts together with the Scourge crawling up the walls, and Noctis isn’t sure if it’s his or Ardyn’s. The thought makes him sick, and the Scourge in him takes notice. It grows rabid, rebelling against its chassis. The first spike of pain lances through his chest, and it’s cold like the Glacian’s wrath and hot like Ifrit’s fire. It pulls and it pushes and he feels how it’s trying to change him from within, protesting against his restraining physiology. For a moment his frantic thoughts flit back to Ravus, mauled and changed by the plague that had festered in him up to the moment he was struck down. Horror dawns as he realises that might be how he meets his end.

“ _Ar…dyn_.” When he speaks, it’s the Scourge that does so for him. It rattles his being, jerks at his unresponsive limbs.

“ _Release me,_ ” he says, and he isn’t sure which part of him it comes from. He feels himself trying to cast out the blackness, while the Scourge thrashes against its wavering host. The hand at his side lifts up his own, and Noctis watches in anger and disgust how Ardyn presses a light kiss to his trembling fingers. The blackness on his lips smears against them, marking them.

When Ardyn pulls away the fire in his gaze sparks with twisted glee.

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, my dear Noct.” His mouth is stained with sickness, but his tone stays human.

“All there is left to do now is to wait and see how the _King of Light_ falls from grace. Will you succumb to the Scourge, or will you watch yourself turn?”

Noctis takes one shuddering breath, and finds that he doesn’t actually need to breathe anymore.

“ _Why a_ _re you…?_ ” His voice sounds inhuman, slightly slurred and growling like a beast trying to speak.

Ardyn’s face changes. The red of his hair becomes stained with black, swirling dust. The very air becomes thick with Scourge, and soon Noctis is looking up at two smouldering pits of molten gold brightly shining as though they were the only lights left in a dark, hopeless world. The rest of Ardyn had become as deeply black as the nightly sea. The hand being held grows colder and colder, sending shivers raking down his spine.

“ _We must endure,”_ says a voice that is ageless and all-powerful. It bounds against the walls of the room, the walls of his head, and even the screaming Scourge in Noctis seems small in comparison.

“ _Once, we were promised greatness by the Six through noble purpose, not unlike the one called Ardyn Lucis Caelum. We carried out their divine will, at great cost of our own. Yet at the time of our reward, our promise went unkept. Our trust was betrayed. Humanity, conspiring with those treacherous Gods, sought to expunge us from this earth. Your purpose, Oh King, was to bring an end to us, thereby wrongfully absolving the sins of the divine.”_

The voice is booming, too loud as it drowns out everything else. It’s too much.

“Stop,” he tries in vain.

 _“Yet your incompetence,”_ it bellows on, _“has ensured our path to greatness is born anew, to be heralded by our hand alone. We shall outlive the Gods themselves, and bring about a new age of everlasting Night.”_

 _“Stop,”_ he begs.

_“Die here, Noctis, or bear witness to the aftermath of your grave failing. Witness the reign of the Scourge.”_

Blazing gold buries into his skull, its heat felt behind his own eyes even when he closes them in agony. He soon loses awareness, plagued by the thundering echo of the voice in his head. Somewhere in the dimming distance, his hand falls back to his side, and he falls with it into a deep, fitful sleep.


	2. Terminus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the tags for this fic before reading this chapter, please. Thank you! Enjoy(?) the ride.

The Scourge doesn’t settle, and Noctis is never asleep for long. When he wakes up again, he wishes he hadn't. But the sickness in his body is slow to adjust to its new residence, and the pain of its protests flares up from time to time. He finds himself longing to drift away as he spends his unending nights writhing. Often he’s alone, plagued by Scourge and the weight of his own thoughts. The soft linen beneath is a cold comfort, like the quiet absence of sound he fills with rumination.

Often he’s alone, but sometimes he isn’t.

A weight dips into the mattress beside him, and he stirs. He can’t find the energy to open his eyes, but he doesn’t need to. If anyone visits, it’s always Ardyn. The fabric shuffles and a shiver courses through him as a gentle touch at his nape sets his nerves on fire. The Scourge in him reacts, crooning at the familiarity while he feels his fingers twitch in an attempt to swat the other away. His body is still mostly immobile, and the only substantial thing he’s managed to do until now is roll over on his side in an fit of stubborn determination. Ardyn keeps his hand where it is, leisurely running his thumb up and down the slope of his neck.

“You’re doing so well, Noct,” he says, and it sounds too mocking to be anything like praise.

Noctis is surprised at how easily he allows his Scourge to speak for him, and how accepting it is of his request. Disgust creeps its way up his throat.

“ _What…?”_ The word sticks to his gritted teeth.

Ardyn gives a huff of laughter.

“The Scourge has deemed you a suitable host. In truth, I had expected it would devour you, like it did to poor young Ravus. It seems you’re more resilient than I thought.”

An odd silence follows. Noctis doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t show any sign of acknowledgement. He stays as he is, mostly for fear of seeing the cruel mirage of Prompto if he dares to look. Maybe Ardyn would masquerade as Ignis or Gladio this time, or —Gods forbid— his father or Luna. His heart lurches with dread at the prospect, so he lies still, letting the slow drag of touch along his neck send ice crawling over his skin. It’s unpleasant, but like the Scourge settling painfully in his bones, he doesn’t fight it.

What would it matter to fight, he wonders, and with that quiet thought an emptiness blooms. It gnaws at his tainted heart, leaving a hole in his chest that aches and aches even as he finally drifts off again. It aches still when he wakes. He’s alone this time, even though the slight electricity at his nape remains for longer than he would like. It’s quiet, eerily so. He allows himself to pry open his eyes, relieved to see from his spot on the bedding that Ardyn is long gone from his side. There’s a loneliness, has been there since he was left here, but it’s not for Ardyn. Looking to the far side of the wall at withered wallpaper, curtains gathering dust and shattered windows, he sees all of Eos out of a windowpane that sheds a dimness like night. He thinks, were he mobile enough, he would drag himself to that faux light and look to a starless sky. There would be no moon in sight, and no matter how long he stayed watching the sun would not rise from beyond Insomnia’s ruined walls. It aches. He lies there for hours on end, watching for the skies to change their sickening hues. He listens for footfalls outside, and curses himself for hoping. But no matter how much he lets himself hope, the scenery stays fixed. The room stays deathly silent. At some point there are tears rolling down the bridge of his nose, staining the bedding below. His body hurts, but it’s not the pain of the Scourge. Instead, the darkness in him aches with him like an icy shroud of paper-thin comfort.

It might be days before Ardyn visits again, and after so much time spent aimlessly aching Noctis can’t help but feel his arrival is a reprieve. Slow, languid steps near him and before he can think to close his eyes, Ardyn is there. It’s not Prompto, and relief washes over him even as the ache grows agonising.

“Still can’t move?”

He feels his ears prickle with the feeling of sound after days of its absence, and a flicker of rage sparks. _That’s all?_ He thinks. _That is all you have to say for yourself, after leaving me here like this?_ With some difficulty he manages to shift his head and level a heated glare at the other. To his own indignant surprise, the first noise that escapes him is barely a wheezy breath. Ardyn smiles. Almost instantly, the Scourge in him offers to take over. He lets it speak for him, if only to save him from further trouble.

“ _Where are they?_ ” He demands.

Ardyn’s expression shifts.

_“Answer me.”_

The silence is infuriating. When he speaks again, his words are hardly discernible through the growling of the Scourge.

_“Fucking answer me, Ardyn. Where are they?”_

The world spins, and suddenly he’s on his back, pinned by the neck. Ardyn’s grip bears the barely restrained intent to kill, but his gaze shows it openly.

“Let’s not ask any questions we don’t want to know the answers to, hm?”

_“Fuck you.”_

“Next time,” Ardyn breathes through a mocking sigh, “it would do well to show some semblance of decency. You do remember who the victor is, do you not? Whose failure led us here?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer.

“Alas, since you’re so keen on knowing, I’ll indulge you. Now, your dear, _devoted_ little friends- oh, but they fought so valiantly in that decisive moment. Truly, you were lucky to have them. They put up quite a fight, and had you succeeded they surely would’ve lived to see the dawn break.”

Noctis feels himself grow cold.

_“No.”_

“I watched them, Noctis. I watched them get torn apart by daemons. I heard their screams.”

_“No, no, no, no-,”_

“I saw the horror and despair in their faces as they realised their King’s _ascension_ didn’t quite go as planned.”

_“No, no, no. Liar, you’re- you’re lying-.”_

“If only for your pitiful sake, I truly wish I was. Believe me, I’d given them plenty of chances to run, to let them survive the damning of the world on their own terms. How tragically touching that they refused to abandon you, even if it meant following you into death itself.”

“Ah,” he continues, laughter creeping into his voice, “but you didn’t actually die, did you now? Not in glory. Not in vain.”

Noctis wants him to stop talking, wants to claw at the hand holding him down. The Scourge in him hums as he turns away, and he knows it’s shame that buds and thorns. It pricks at his eyes, and he’s crying again. He knows it’s exactly what Ardyn’s jeering and mocking serves to accomplish, but who is he to deny the truth? Who is he to deny the reality that the ones most dear to him are dead because he failed? He feels like the world is laughing at him, and Ardyn laughs along with it. He stares into a distance beyond the walls, beyond the ringing in his ears. It is a small blessing when the laughter fades to an echo, but then his eyes are forced back to meet Ardyn’s as his head is tilted. It aches, watching the other calmly drink in his misery, and he wonders if the quietude of this moment is worse than the ridicule. At last, Ardyn’s moves away, but not before his lips curl into a wider smile.

“ _You_ asked, my dear.”

With that and the shallow sounds of fading footsteps, he is alone again. It’s quiet, as though the turmoil of the past moment had never ensued in the first place. But even that passes all the same, and reality comes crashing down. Prompto is dead. Ignis is dead. Gladio is dead.

“Oh, Gods,” he hears himself rasp. No one answers. No one takes notice. Grief takes its devastating hold. It aches unlike anything he’s ever felt. He feels like he might die from its weight. He finds himself wishing he could.

“Oh, Gods. I’m so sorry.”

They’ll never hear him say it. It aches. It _aches_. He wails and cries into trembling hands, into merciless silence. His lamentation resounds against the palms of his hands that are warmed by the burning of shame and countless tears.

 

—/—

 

Noctis sleeps again, somehow. He doesn't know when he'd drifted off into restless slumber, having grown tired of crying, but now his eyes are dry, his throat is raw and his mind is heavy.

He feels as though something has shifted in him, and the heavy grief hanging overhead is somewhat muted by it. The discovery of a newfound energy in his limbs is an underwhelming one. His body still protests, but with effort he manages to push himself up. His arms tremble, his back aches, and he almost collapses. But the ache of real pain is better than the emptiness in his Scourged heart, and it encourages him to sit upright. The room looks much smaller like this, and to his horror he recognises it to be his father’s bedroom. More needless cruelty, but he supposes Ardyn wouldn’t know that. He remembers being here, and it seems like ages ago. The Citadel was lonely. It was far too big for one spirited child whose silent demeanour was often betrayed by a youthful liveliness in his eyes that suited his age. His father would be there as one of few to foster that liveliness, but only during evenings spent at his bedside listening to stories from picture books with colourful illustrations. They hardly ever talked of the war outside the walls, and to Noctis it didn’t really exist until he’d grown some years older. It didn’t exist until deep scars bloomed on his back to remind him the world was larger, less quiet and much more disordered than that empty, immaculate Citadel. Now he’s back here, in his father’s bedroom left untended and desolate, and he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t be here, in this place that has lost all the warmth it once had. This is all wrong. _This is all wrong_ , he thinks as his shaking legs carry him to the window. The pain barely registers anymore. His father’s bedroom was always so high up. He remembers gazing at a shrouded Insomnia from that window, the lights of the city below flickering like stars all the way into the deep, dark horizon of the walls in the distance. Here, it’s neither night nor day. When he looks out the window he sees a world that is wrong. He sees a world that shouldn’t be. The lock on the windowpane gives without much resistance, and the sudden rush of the wind blowing in shocks him back into reality. The curtains flutter.

Despite everything, the outside air smells the same.

He stills, listening to the wind, pretending he can hear Prompto’s voice somewhere beneath that rush of toneless sound. He pretends he can see flickering lights in that everlasting dimness.

He climbs with quivering limbs, decaying wood digging into his palms.

Breathing deep, eyes to that twisted sky, he propels himself forward to greet the ground somewhere far below.

 


	3. Repose

He remembers falling, hard and fast. The scenery flits by, leaving a shimmer like light cascading down the windows with him. The sky grows wide and hollow, further away. The wind rushes past in gusts, the howling drowned out by the panic in his Scourged heart that beats and beats against its cage as though it would try to escape the fall. It all feels so exhilarating. In a moment of sweet irony, closing in on death as fast as the earth pulled him to it, he finds he hasn’t felt this alive in a long time.

He wakes up.

It’s odd. His body feels less like mangled flesh, pulverised bones and a scattering conscience, more like a dissonant ensemble of a body and one fragmented but otherwise whole mind. There is Scourge thrumming beneath his skin, webbing and tangling in his system. The way it swarms through his arteries and veins betrays its haste. It disperses and contracts, moving like something desperate to stay alive. Breathing. Like him. Alive. Noctis realises he’s alive, not dead. This wasn’t supposed to happen, but the energy to get mad isn’t there. Even when Ardyn inevitably pops into view, bowing down to him in an almost comical manner, he can’t find the incentive to react. Ardyn’s brow is furrowed when he turns his head skyward up the Citadel’s walls, eyes flitting down to gauge the drop. There’s a slight wince as he meets ground level.

“That was quite the fall you took.”

Stating the obvious, Noctis thinks, but he doesn’t voice it. He feels like he can’t. Gods, he’s tired. He remembers that faraway time when the sun still shone, its gentle light beating down on four backs and reflecting off the scales of a reptilian beast. Its bared fangs had been dripping with venom that could sizzle through human flesh, but what had ultimately brought Noctis to death’s doorstep was the swift beat of its tail flinging him into the rocks. It all passed in haphazard seconds, but he remembers vividly the first deep, gasping breath of air he took upon revival. From the moment of that pseudo-rebirth his blood had roared with newly renewed vigour in his veins, the battle back in full swing. It was the first Phoenix Down of many, but every single one after that was the same. Timeless blackness before being spat out into a flurrying world of clattering sound and bursting colour. He didn’t have to worry about almost having died then, didn’t have to ponder over his fragile mortality, he just had to survive the oncoming barrage of bullets and claws. Upon waking here, the cold stone of the Citadel’s courtyard against his back, it was different. Tired. Past bedtime, past due dates. Silent hush of the wind. Wrong, like everything else in this wretched world. Like the looming, sickly sky. Like the Scourge that kept him from dying. Like the distant absence of voices and hands he’d grown so painfully fond of. Wrong, like when Ardyn looks down again he regards him with pity. It’s not enough to stir him, but Noctis feels some twisted kinship deep within as he meets that pitying look head-on. He doesn’t need it. If anything, he thinks the man’s usual mockery would at least rile him up enough to get back up on his feet.

He takes to making the unkind pavement his home, settling as if waiting for moss and weeds to sprout from his skin and swallow him into the earth. Would plants still grow in a lightless place like this? Would he have to dig a hole himself and lie in it? Let me be, he thinks. Ardyn sighs aloud, and Noctis thinks it with more fervour. He might’ve flinched when the other drew near, some instinctual fear flickering like a dying firelight when a hand comes to rest at his shoulder. It doesn’t do much else, though. Testing the waters. Ardyn gives him an inquisitive look, that excruciating and unwanted pity right behind it all the same. He considers closing his eyes to avoid it, but he feels hesitant. It irks him to admit how good it feels to be acknowledged, to see that acknowledgment reflected in someone. Not like the walls of his father’s bedroom or the windowpane that neither felt nor cared for him no matter how much he’d cried at them. Those callous things didn’t reflect anything but the dull echoes of his useless sobs, unheard murmurs and overdue apologies.

To his own surprise, a sort of undignified whine slips from his mouth when Ardyn pulls him up slowly. Gently. It’s as though his entire demeanour has gone soft, almost meek, and _Gods_ , Noctis wants him to _stop doing that_. He says nothing as he’s hoisted up from the pavement, says nothing as he’s carried through the halls of the Citadel, losing himself in the feeling of being pulled along. Ardyn’s arms are oddly warm, and it’s comforting when he closes his eyes and pretends it’s Prompto that’s holding him. He doesn’t smell like Prompto, though. Something deeper, almost earthy. A trace of Scourge like the sweetness of rotting fruit. The elevator gives a perfunctory little ding, snapping him out of his trance. He raises his heavy-as-lead head to look. Living quarters, Crownsguard suites. Closer to the first floor than his father’s bedroom, but no less regal. No less desolate, either, with air rudely barging in where a window used to be. No shards of glass on the carpet. He’s being pulled along and into the first suite, and it occurs to him Ardyn has been talking for a while now. No edge in his voice, and maybe that’s why the words don’t register. There is a shift in pitch when the voice stops, and it was a question of sorts. Ardyn doesn’t push when he doesn’t answer, merely keeps dragging him along until suddenly he’s being sat down on smooth porcelain. The sound of water running, and he wonders how. Then again, the lights are on too. The elevator still works. He doesn’t question it, doesn’t fuss over life’s big questions, like the one that begs _how is the plumbing still working_. His jacket is being shrugged off, tugged from his arms. Then there are hands at his neck, and he flinches even as they do little but settle at his collar, fingering buttons.

Working downward, Ardyn’s not looking at him. He finds himself looking at Ardyn. Divested of his usual coat and patterned scarves, the man looks a lot less imposing. He looks at amber eyes cast downward, not trying to captivate or take centre stage. Rather engrossed in his task. Humble, just shy of human. _As you were, a kind and noble king?_ Noctis knows now he would never return to that, knows _he_ can never live up to that. Too broken now. He turns his head away from that distorted reflection, meets the one in the mirror and startles so badly the Scourge wells up and spills out. The thing over there from the open window to a parallel world stares back with wide, black eyes. He sees no True King in that, never has. Certainly no king in a plague-ridden face, matted hair and sunken features. Ardyn reels him back in when he pulls his unbuttoned dress shirt from his shoulders, and then his undershirt is being pulled over his head as well. He thinks, were it any other day, he would’ve been livid and mortified at the advances. But even when Ardyn kneels before him and starts to untie his shoes, he lets it happen as though this whole ritual was as natural as waking up in the morning. Before the morning had lost its meaning and daemonic chaos had doused Eos in omnipresent darkness. He would admit to slight embarrassment and horror as he’s made to wiggle out of his own trousers and underthings, but Ardyn merely scoffs and swats away any feeble attempts to deter his hands. He’s bare now, and he feels just as bare. He dares take another gander at the mirror, sees some downtrodden, naked creature too large and muscled for the frailness it affects. They both turn away out of shame, and Noctis looks down his nose at his arms, his stomach and his legs. Even after so many years his body still bears a litany of pale scars, jagged lines of raised skin that gleam in electric light. Short and thin or long and wide, once bleeding all the same. All tied to memories he can’t quite place. The one on his back surely remains, as does the memory. He doesn’t remember the daemon, the aftermath, but he does feel the heat of the fire. Hears the screeching of tires. The heat reveals itself to be steam lapping at his exposed skin, and the screech is the faucet being turned off.The echoes of streaming water bound against porcelain before a jarring silence fills the space like hot air. Ardyn runs his hand through the water experimentally.

“Come now, in you go,” and they’re the first words that Noctis actually hears.

He lets himself get manhandled into the bathtub, and the sudden sensation of warmth everywhere is a little too overwhelming. There’s a splash and a gasp when he loses his balance and falls back against a heated surface, but Ardyn’s there to steady him. He regains his composure and tries to settle despite the water setting his nerves alight with an almost suffocating rush of heat. Too hot? He doesn’t know. The steam curls in his nostrils and fogs up his brain. Then the rush dies down and he sees the ripples in the water, sees wading, tiny specks of dirt and dust that have peeled off his skin. Beneath the shifting surface the outlines of his legs are warbled. He wants to submerge himself, maybe never come up for air again. Let his lungs fill with water. He wants to let his skin prune so much he becomes unrecognisable. Ardyn puts a stop to that train of thought as he lets a pail tip over his head, its warm and watery contents pouring down his crown without warning. After he blinks the droplets from his lashes he puts what little energy he has into a frown directed at the other. Ardyn smiles with all the self-satisfaction of a cat having pushed a glass off the counter to get a rise out of its owner. Have your fucking fun, you piece of shit, Noctis thinks. To his private dismay the words sound somewhat fond in his head, and he’s glad he can’t say it out loud. Another deluge of warmth comes down as if in retaliation, but he doesn’t startle again. The sound of droplets pelting the bath water is a soothing one, and he watches them fall from the tips of his wetted hair. Then there’s the gentle press of fingertips at his jaw, drawing his head up as a washcloth grazes over his cheek. An achingly familiar smell of soap. The cloth is a little unpleasant when it scrapes against his beard, but he supposes it’s not without merit when the washcloth comes back stained with brownish black. The last time he was this grimy must’ve been after the marlboro, having fought in swampy, muddy sludge that might’ve gotten in his mouth more times than he’d like to admit. At least the stench wasn’t nearly as bad. Here it’s mostly soap. Ardyn cleans his face, pushes back his bangs and cards his fingers through his hair as he lets another pail tip. It’s all very meticulous, and the man never uses any unnecessary force. Dozing off at the sounds of water and the mild touches, Noctis lets his mind wander. It’s odd, he realises. He wonders why. Why the kindness? Even as he the Accursed should be basking in the spoils of his victory, revelling in having bent the entire world to his will. After he’d tainted and broken his greatest and only worthy adversary beyond repair. Why the kindness? He considers it might be regret, guilt, and he shudders at the thought. Don’t let it be that, he prays. Anything but that. He tries to imagine this kindness is just another one of Ardyn’s malicious ploys, a set-up for cruelty to come like how a predator plays with its prey before it devours. He tries in earnest to deny this kindness is anything but genuine, anything but born from guilt over his actions. But when he catches Ardyn’s eyes he sees nothing but that which he was so afraid to see. Ardyn stills in turn.

“Something on your mind?”

Noctis wants anything but to confirm the truth that’s quite literally staring him in the face. If it is really regret that is reflected in those eyes, then what did the world end for? What did Prompto, Ignis and Gladio die for? Oh Gods, he doesn’t want to think about it.

Who knows, he surmises. Who knows. _Who cares_. He tries to bury the questions, breaks away from Ardyn’s inquisitive expression. The comforting warmth of the bathwater turns stale. It’s gone somewhat lukewarm anyway. It takes some minutes of lingering discomfort before Ardyn’s satisfied with Noctis’ much-needed venture into cleanliness and pulls the plug. The cold is eager to plaster itself onto his damp skin, but then a towel is wrapped around his shoulders.

“Careful,” Ardyn says, guiding him to his feet and out of the emptied bath. He’s sat down again, and he watches Ardyn leave the room. The mirror’s fogged up now, thankfully. Noctis watches his wrinkly fingers, idly traces the lines in his palms before Ardyn returns with a folded set of clothes in hand. He wonders for a moment if he can’t just wear his old clothes, but one glance at his tattered rags of royalty convinces him otherwise. Ardyn takes hold of the towel and starts patting him dry, tousling his hair a bit. Never roughly, always gentle and edging on furtive. Noctis doesn’t want to look at him, shuts his eyes when he comes too close. The clothes he’s made to wear are just slightly baggy. A white dress shirt falling off his thin frame, barely brushing against his stomach as he sits. The legs of his trousers rolled up to keep them from his heels. Bare footed, promised shoes sometime later, when he finds ones that fit he says. Later, Noctis thinks. Ardyn wasn’t expecting him to leave anytime soon, apparently. Not through death in any case. Am I immortal now? Kept alive by the Scourge, like you? Yet another wave of existential dread threatens to overwhelm him at the notion, so he adds that inquiry to the growing list of questions he doesn’t particularly wants answered. On the matter of leaving he allows himself to ponder. Maybe once he grows mobile enough he’ll leave the Citadel. Maybe he’ll just leave for the sake of leaving, or maybe he’ll help the survivors in Lestallum. Somehow. The newly acquired Scourge in his veins should be good for something, right?

“Noctis.”

Oh. He looks up when his name is called for a third time, right at Ardyn. Meeting his gaze is a little easier now.

“While we do have all the time in the world to idle, I would consider a bed to be a marginally more comfortable place to do so than the edge of a tub. Wouldn’t you agree?”

He gives a small sigh before he accepts the other’s outstretched hand. A sound like a squeak tumbles from him when an arm wraps around his waist and he’s pulled up. One last look at the mirror, and to his dismay the condensation has started to evaporate. He sees his reflection from the waist up. Less naked, less dirty and slightly less unsightly. Still not a king, though. The heated air of the bathroom is behind when he’s back in the bedchamber of the suite. No windows here, he notes. Not that that matters anymore. Ardyn sits him down on the bed, and he’s thankful that it happens just as his legs begin to give out. Leaving the Citadel would have to wait, at least until he can reach the front gate without having to crawl. Ardyn disentangles himself with such caution that he might expect Noctis to shatter like glass at the softest push. It’s patronising, but Noctis can’t deny he’d rather be coddled like this than treated coldly. He raises his head to meet the other’s gaze, finds it filled with something he can’t put a name to, and it’s directed solely at him through a veil of radiant amber. It’s what spurs him to reach for Ardyn’s wrist as the man makes to stand and leave. The silence that follows is expectant, somewhat tense. Don’t go. _Don’t leave_. Noctis doesn’t say it, wouldn’t say it for his dignity’s sake, but he doesn’t need to. Once more, Ardyn complies without a word in edgewise. Again, kindness. Noctis wonders why. He wonders why while he tugs at the other’s sleeve, motioning to the bed like a mute child. Ardyn’s bizarrely boundless kindness extends so far that he lets himself be ushered to the mattress by needy hands, the red of his hair spilling onto the pillows. Noctis lies down as well, facing the other. For a moment, it’s just that. He tries to pinpoint that yet unknown thing reflected in the other’s eyes. Then, slow as the way he raises his hand to Ardyn’s cheek, something tugs the corners of his mouth upwards. Why the kindness? There are words on his tongue. A guess, and it’s out before he can stop himself.

“I’m all you have.”

He smiles wider as he says it, just short of showing teeth. Ardyn doesn’t smile back, keeps his expression carefully blank, and that’s how he knows he’s right. The triumph is malicious, entirely worthless, but too satisfying to keep himself from indulging. He closes in, breathes in deep the sweet rot of Scourge that emanates from both of them. A hand comes to rest at his hip like a quiet affirmation. Pathetic. Covetous, pitiful kindness.

For the first time in what seems like forever, he falls soundly asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my hurt/comfort loving ass..............
> 
> petition to retitle this fic 'noctis falls asleep a lot'


End file.
